The NJB, NAB, and many others are honestly quite useless when it comes to reading the words of God in English, often due to the politically-correct (feminism, etc.) or secular (anti-supernatural, prophecy is impossible, miracles are fake, etc.) biases of the translators. Then, there are some good Bibles that display anti-Catholic bias in certain translational choices, but I’d rather have an anti-Catholic bias in certain passages than an anti-Christian or anti-theistic bias pervading the entire work, especially when heaped together with the textual and historical criticisms, the latter of which, when operating from naturalistic premises (which one can’t blame them for, as it’s the only way to research history), is inherently and necessarily denying of God and faith, and the attendants, such as prophecy and miracles.
The Douay-Rheims is an excellent Bible. I trust only several translations, and none of them absolutely, as I read the NT in the original Greek and in Latin, but I must read translations of the OT (both the Septuagint and English translations). These translations have I found worthy, although not all of them come with a full canon. If you want, I can tell you of particularly egregious choices in translation that make certain books (such as the NAB and its rendering of Genesis 1:1-3, and its rearranging of verses to introduce contradictions where none exist in the text, not to mention the annotation, which is actually beyond useless, and harmful, if one thinks that it is true because it is written in a Bible, or orthodox because it has the imprimatur) worthless as Bibles, although all translations are imperfect.
These are the translations, in rough order of preference: Douay-Rheims, KJV, Confraternity Version, Knox’s Translation, NKJV, Brenton’s Septuagint, Orthodox Study Bible, New English Translation of the Septuagint, NASB, ASV 1901, ESV, Old Jerusalem Bible, RSV-2CE, CPDV, NAB (New Testament only). The New International Version (1984) is decent, as it doesn’t have an anti-Christian bias, but it has a very, very strong Protestant, sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus bias throughout the NT. The HCSB is similar.
These are the translations I refuse to read: NRSV (although it can be used for critical study, to refute the critics, who all use it), NAB OT, NABRE OT (the NAB NT is decent), NEB, REB, NJB, Moffatt, NLT, NIV 2011, MSG, NWT, TNIV (much the same as NIV 2011).
Those not listed - pretty much very rare versions (AMP, Berkeley, Goodspeed), and the RSV and RSV-CE - are acceptable, but not as good as those that are good, but not as horrible as those listed as bad. For detailed study, a good Bible is important, but for the bare outlines of the Gospel message, any Bible - even the worst - will almost certainly do. The errors creep in when getting in to points of doctrine, such as prophecy, miracle, the eternity or creation of the world, the reliability or infallibility of Scripture, the place of women in the Church, Paul’s vice lists/morality/what is a sin?, etc. The NLT, MSG, and NIV 2011 are listed as poor because of the former two’s very, very loose use of language, so that it’s not so much a translation as a retelling of the Bible, and the latter for its use of gender language, even though it doesn’t have an anti-supernaturalist or anti-theistic bias.
If you’re interested in starting to study the Bible, you should come at it from both sides, so that you can confront the scoffers and doubters on your own terms, instead of being first exposed to some of the more ridiculously thin higher-critical theories by atheists and modernists.
So to answer the question, I prefer the NIV, which is translated from both Latin and Greek texts, checking with my Interlinear Greek English NT.
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